A Republican Party official in Iowa complained that the massacre of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist had been turned into a racial issue that forced reruns of a 1980s TV show off the air.

Tamara Scott, a Republican National Committeewoman and lobbyist for The Family Leader, said on her radio program last week that the mass shooting in South Carolina was instead linked to gay marriage and Benghazi, reported Right Wing Watch.

Scott said their deaths were “being hijacked to a racial issue,” when instead they were “martyrs” like bakers and florists whose religious beliefs were offended by same-sex couples who offered them money to help celebrate their weddings.

She said the Charleston slayings – like marriage equality – were part of a “targeted assault” against Christianity and a Benghazi-style “diversion” from more important issues.

“The things that they should be concerned about, in my opinion, are a media that relentlessly pit groups against each other, voters in the elections where they pit voters into blocs against each other, or the education system that consistently creates a class warfare and an envy system in their children at an early age, or rappers with their racist rants about rape and everything else,” Scott said. “There are several things that are feeding into this — but it’s not a gun and it’s not a flag.”

She said it was unfair to “the young kids” to take down government-sanctioned displays of the Confederate flag and to cancel reruns of a television show that ended production in February 1985.

“For them the flag was a symbol of affection for a fun show and some culture known in the South,” Scott said. “The unfortunate thing is this discussion is now creating a divide and a dialogue that would have died out decades ago had we not brought it up again over this. We’re continuing a problem that was actually, literally dying out.”